Skepticism

EVENTS

Every woman scientist needs a beard

Fiona Ingleby wrote a paper on the difficulties of making the transition from graduate school to post-doctoral position for women. She submitted it for review. A review is kind of an invited comment, you know, so given Lewis’ Law, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at what followed — she got a negative review that actually justified the contents of her paper.

How’s this for 21st century thinking?

Not only is it grossly sexist, it’s factually wrong. The comparison of writing to running a mile is simply bizarre, and I thought for a moment that this person has to be trolling…except that this is a presumably professional review in a presumably good journal. But then if there’s anything I’ve learned in the last decade, to my everlasting dismay, it’s that being a professional smart person doesn’t make one immune to some really wretched biases.

But if I were to take that remark seriously, I’d be worried. I’m fast approaching 60, and I fear that just about every 25 year old woman could run circles around me. Is the reviewer making an argument for mandatory retirement at age 30?

But he gets worse. He has a suggestion to improve the paper.

That’s right, the paper needs a beard.

Of course, now my fears are allayed. All those clever young women who are healthier and can run faster than me will still need to keep me around, so I can slap my name on their work, which I didn’t do and maybe don’t even understand, conferring upon their paper the inherent dignity and worth of the penis.

All you young ladies who are looking for a nominal co-author to add that aura of precious masculinity to your work, I’m … wait, no, I’m not available. One of the things I had drilled into me as a graduate student was that authorship was an obligation, that every author has to be responsible for the full contents of the paper. My PI didn’t even follow the hallowed tradition of getting his name stuck on at the end of every paper coming out of his lab!

I guess I’m out of this game. But apparently there are still people in this field who think otherwise, and in particular are concerned about controlling those women scientists gone wild.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising that you, being just another fucking sexist, will go to surreally stupid comparissons in a desperate attempt to give the impression that you are not just going by prejudice….
Fucking hell…i bet he is one of those that like to pretend that “I’m a man, i’m rational by default, women are irrational, everybody knows that”. Well, Mr.Sexist, or should i say Dr.Sexist, those quotes right there in the OP are some seriously irrational shit…but then again your irrational sexist brain probably can’t see it…too much emotional bias in the way….

So here’s my question. If I’m reading the story right, these were referee comments. What is the responsibility of the editor when s/he receives a referee report containing garbage like this? Pass them along without comment? (Certainly not, IMHO) Pass them along with a “this report isn’t fair but them’s the breaks” message? Pass them along, but tell the authors that the journal will solicit another referee report from someone not working at Mad Men University? Silently eat the report and tell the authors that their paper will take a little longer to evaluate due to logistical difficulties, and we’re very sorry? Internally blacklist the referee? Publicly blacklist the referee?

Read that second image quote, substituting “senior” instead of “male”; then the advice is good. Why he had to assert “male” as the only possibility of a “reasoned adviser” for a proposed paper is pure sexism. (a guess Lewis Law is indeed in effect). Also, the assumption that women are most likely to drift away from empirical evidence into ideological territory, is doubly sexist.
pffft. that reads like a “beard” drifting into “ideologically biased assumptions”. Does he have a mirror? I guess having a beard means no shaving, so no mirror necessary. He should get one.

@5 Editors, like reviewers, come in many different varieties. In practice, all of the responses that you mention happen, depending on how dedicated the editor is. I know that I’ve been asked (very occasionally) to step in a perform an additional review when one of the originals was deemed unprofessional.

@6 Actually, I think asking for someone more senior to review/become co-author is not really an improvement. It suggests that junior scientists can’t do without senior scientists, which is simply not true. In this specific case, I don’t believe it would have helped anyway. Based on what I’ve read, the criticisms were very vague: “methodologically weak,” for instance. To make such a comment and not follow up with specifics of what made the methodology weak is also unprofessional. Such a statement does not contain enough information to be evaluated, no matter what level of experience you have. If the criticism had been specific and of the sort that a more experienced scientist might have helped, then I’d agree. But, there is no evidence that this is the case. And, I’d say that the quality of the review indicates that the opposite is likely to be the case.

BTW, if you want to know why men indeed often have more stamina at work and invest more hours, look at the statisitcs to how housework is distributed even when both partners work full time. Here’s a hint: it’s not even.

What if she didn’t get a male to sign off on her paper, but another female? Can two women count for one man? (We’re drifting dangerously into Islamist territory here, but then, that’s sort of what this is about, right? Keeping women out of the public eye if possible?)

@7: I meant my question normatively rather than descriptively. In practice, of course, the editor probably has a closer professional relationship with the referee than s/he does with the author, and will not want to burn bridges lightly.

@11 No, that is not necessarily true because today’s reviewer is tomorrow’s author. TBH, I believe that editors have a great deal of autonomy. Even if there is some standard (in my experience, a review has to be pretty shit before anyone does anything about it), I expect that most editors ignore it.

Well, at least if we follow his advice about putting a man on the paper, I agree with his earlier comment that we shouldn’t be surprised that men have more publications than women. Is it possible to be any less self aware?

men, perhaps, on average work more hours per week than women, due to marginally better health and stamina.”
— Holms (#18)

I would like to see Mr. Privilege come even close to the 10 meters a second that Ms. Florence Griffith-Joyner ran in the Seoul Olympics.

In college, my little student job had me working at the track for a few months a year, so I got to see the women sprinters train. Seeing a person take off as fast as they did in person was breathtaking. I had no illusions that I could never run that fast.

I wonder if there has been any time, at any point in history, in which a reviewer on a paper about anything related to women told the male authors that they needed some female co-authors to make sure their results weren’t biased.

Of course, now my fears are allayed. All those clever young women who are healthier and can run faster than me will still need to keep me around, so I can slap my name on their work, which I didn’t do and maybe don’t even understand, conferring upon their paper the inherent dignity and worth of the penis.”

That would be nice, but unfortunately it just doesn’t work that way. Being a trans woman, I know from personal experience there is zero inherent dignity and worth to having one…